Since the September 11 attacks, President George W. Bush has rhetorically pledged to make the promotion of democracy abroad a primary objective of U.S. foreign policy, emphasizing the moral and strategic imperatives for advancing freedom around the world. At the same time, the United States has become both less liked and less admired by governments and societies around the world. Although its roots are deep, this latest spike in anti-Americanism comes largely as the result of Bushs most significant foreign policy initiative, the invasion of Iraq, which has been extremely unpopular both in democratic and nondemocratic states. In its history, the United States has probably never before suffered such a low international standing.

Several influential commentators have suggested recently that democratization in developing countries produces political instability, ethnic conflict, and poor economic outcomes. The authors of this paper show that the data do not support the view that democratization is bad for economic performance. Our analysis reveals that major democratic transitions have, if anything, a positive effect on economic growth in the short run. This is especially true for the poorest countries of the world and those that are marked by sharp ethnic divisions. Democratizations tend to follow periods of low growth rather than precede them. Moreover, democratic transitions are associated with a decline in growth volatility. Systematic analysis therefore uncovers a picture that is considerably more favorable to democratization.

Although interest among sociologists in the consolidation and expansion of an international human rights regime has grown in recent years, little attention is accorded the formal procedures that allow individuals aggrieved by states to appeal directly to an international audience. Using data for 82 countries between 1976 and 1999, this article examines the political and cultural factors that affect the number and rate of individual human rights abuse claims filed with Human Rights Committee. Negative binomial and event history analyses indicate that a country's favorable human rights practices, political democracy, and membership in most non-Western civilizations significantly reduce the number and rate of claims emanating from a country. Conversely, extensive participation in international non-governmental organizations, membership in Western civilization, and intra-state diffusion processes increase the number and rate of claims filed against a country. Other factors, including post-communist regime changes, state participation in international governmental organizations, the World Human Rights Conference, and GDP per capita, have no impact. Results suggest that claims alleging state abuse of human rights

1. increase as a country's human rights practices worsen;
   
2. decline as effective means of recourse become available domestically; and
   
3. increase with the cultural empowerment of individuals.

The new millennium began with the triumph of democracy and markets. But for whom is life just, how so, and why? And what is being done to correct persisting injustices? Blending macro-level global and national analysis with in-depth grassroots detail, the contributors highlight roots of injustices, how they are perceived, and efforts to alleviate them. Following up on issues raised in the groundbreaking best-seller Power and Popular Protest: Latin American Social Movements (California, 2001), these essays elucidate how conceptions of justice are socially constructed and contested and historically contingent, shaped by people's values and institutionally grounded in real-life experiences. The contributors, a stellar coterie of North and Latin American scholars, offer refreshing new insights that deepen our understanding of social justice as ideology and practice.

Why does Nigeria have a history of failed republics, failed governance as well as false starts and dead-ends on the path to economic development, social coherence, and peace? Is the Fourth Republic condemned to the fate of previous ones, or can it rise above the heavy weight ofthe past and chart a different path for itself? In this volume of 26 chapters, put together to honour one of Nigeria's foremost political scientists, four generations of political scientists, economists, political economists, sociologists, psychologists, international relations experts, lawyers, historians and specialists in literature from Africa and North America provide fresh and succinct insights on these and other posers in original essays that range from the theoretical to the analytical, from those that are historical and comparative to those that focus on the current situation in that important African country.

The essays focus on. four cardinal points that sin post Nigeria's perennial struggle for democracy and good governance as cause, effect and terrain. These are the structure, history, processes and dynamics of the country's putative federal system; governance issues; the formation and transformation of identities; and the global contexts of the production and reproduction of the Nigerian state, economy and society.

The book will be of great value to Nigerians, friends of Nigeria, and all those interested in understanding the path that has led Nigeria to its present, state and in finding alternative pathways to a future that is more democratic, better governed, and more developed.

After more than a decade of reform efforts in Africa, much of the optimism over the continent's prospects has been replaced by widespread "Afropessimism." But to what extent is either view well founded? Democratic Reform in Africa plumbs the key issues in the contemporary African experience - including intrastate conflict, corruption, and the development of civil society - highlighting the challenges and evaluating the progress of political and economic change.

Case studies of Botswana, Mozambique, Nigeria, and South Africa complement the thematic chapters, exploring the complex interactions between democracy and development.

This paper provides an overview of the degree to which sanctions help democracy. A form of foreign pressure, economic sanctions are often dismissed as ineffective instruments to achieve anything. This paper suggests that foreign pressure is more effective than usually thought. Sanctions may fail to turn a state democratic, but their use indicates a growing intolerance for illiberal government.

The report presented here is the result of several months of meetings and debate. It represents an effort to lay out the broad contours of a transatlantic strategy to promote democracy and human development in the Broader Middle East could and should look like. The authors challenge us to go beyond current conventional wisdom and propose the building blocks of a grand strategy to help the broader Middle East transform itself. Their ideas they present are intended to spur further debate and discussion, including with democrats and reformers in the region itself.

The German Marshall Fund is proud to present this strategy report as the Istanbul Paper #1 in the run-up to the NATO Istanbul summit. This paper is intended to help further a dialogue that has already begun across the Atlantic and with the region but which now must be deepened. In doing so, we hope to make a contribution to greater understanding and cooperation across the Atlantic on one of the key challenges of our era.

In 1995 the Commission argued that "the European Union has gradually come to define itself in terms of the promotion of [human] rights and democratic freedoms."1 Over the last decade, the identification of the European Union with a set of common values - not always fully articulated but with human rights and democracy at their heart - has become an increasingly important part of EU policy-making, both internally and externally.